Whenever any other adult walks into my classroom, things change. Why? Cause classrooms are fishbowls and when a new species enters the tank, the environment changes.

Sure, in some ways, things will revert back to normal. Especially if I, at the front of the room, keep an even keel, and keep rolling on with business as usual. (Which I usually do. I have sort of given up on dog and pony shows a long time ago… but when you are a young teacher and you think that your job is on the line when a “boss” walks in, you get tense and start ascending Bloom’s taxonomy as if climbing this academic Kilimanjaro was the only thing ever that you were hired to do. What? The VP is coming? Quick kids, start to SYNTHESIZE!!! It’s such a joke.)

However, kids who are normally energetic and enthusiastic will clam up and in my experience, the “high end” of class gets lost – or at least tamped down. Sure, a few of the most bubbling personalities will still participate and share their “voice” with the room but most kids will — especially when there are people in suits or business attire in the class — remain in their own little quiet, one-word response bubble.

Classes where the teachers don’t have classroom management though… they are often exposed. I mean a teacher that can’t get Jimmy to sit down when the principal is not in the room is a teacher that feels embarrassed and threatened when the VP is in the room watching Jimmy defy classroom protocol.

But the thing is, the VP’s often look at the teacher as if it’s “the educator’s” fault that Jimmy won’t sit down, be quiet and do some work. Why the VP doesn’t enter the room with the attitude that, “Hey, this is my school and I am here to support the teachers and if Jimmy won’t get on the bus, I need to do something about Jimmy,” is beyond me.

Uhm, maybe, the teacher could use some back-up?

But no, VP’s enter the room looking for “our” problems… as if the problems they see in their teachers’ rooms are not “their” problems as well.

Goodness how I’d love to see the tables turned on this one though. I mean how great would it be to see the entire school board walk into my VP’s office? I wonder if she would carry on in the same way as she would if it was just a P.E. teacher who had popped by.

And I wonder if they had only spent 7 minutes in her office (with a check sheet in hand, of course — the rubric for good Vice Principalling… I mean who hasn’t memorized that?) if she would feel as if she was being fairly evaluated and assessed by her “bosses”.

No notice. No prior awareness of what was even on the check sheet. Just BOOM! a surprise little visit. In, then out, then gone… the only lasting impression being an air of slight disapproval from each of the Board Members.

Of course, this folly bleeds upwards. Why? Because instead of supporting her, they come in with an attitude of “looking for her faults”. And she thinks to herself, “If you know so much, then you trying doing this damn job!”

Don’t you just love how everyone feels as if they can do your job better than you can do it yourself? Parents, principals, kids, they all think, What schmoe couldn’t do a better job than the schlub they currently have in room 6213?

And when I look at the work my school board does, my VP does, the science and math and history and P.E. teachers do, I pretty much think the same thing, don’t I.

Yep, I am a hypocrite. Don’t judge me but I will judge you.

Ya gotta love school mentality, right?

The other day the Principal and a Vice Principal came into my room un-announced. Why? To do “informal observations”.

I was given no notice, no inkling — didn’t even know they were in this wing of our school.

And still during the middle of 6th period they popped in, each took a position on one side of the room — checksheet in hand — and they observed.

I was at the front of the room at the time just having finished up giving a cloze quiz about the current book we are reading. My front board was kinda blank but that’s only because I needed the space for the next part of class where I’d be using the white board to draw a few things, jot down some of their own notes, and blah, blah… you know, I was just planning on using my board.

Thing was, at the time when they walked in, I wasn’t really using the board.

And the fact is, I can’t say, all that much was going on other than the fact that every kid was in their seat with their head down working.

The P and the VP didn’t say boo to me. And they were really only in my room for less than 7 minutes. They took notes but I never saw them. They “observed” things but I have no idea what they noted. Essentially, they did a fly-by, took a snapshot of my class and left.

Of course, the paranoid person in me thinks, “Hey wait! That’s just a snapshot. You gotta stick around to see this great stuff I have planned for later in the class. And then you have to see how it fits in with this really cool thing I am gonna do next Tuesday. And when you take it in context of what we did last Wednesday and you see how it relates to what I have planned in February, it really will add up to something.”

But alas, all they saw was the snapshot. And I gotta say, I feel a bit cheated by it. I mean on one hand, yes, give me 5 minutes in a class and I can tell a great deal. I do believe that is true. From the sense of classroom management and so on, 5 minutes can “tell” a little bit.

But does it really “inform”? Naw. And when they do this silent, stealthy drop-in, drop-outs, is there a teacher on staff that ever really feels good about it?

What did they see?
Do I need to go explain myself?
Will what they saw be “used against me” at a later date?

Maybe they loved it? If so, it would boost my morale if they let me know.
Maybe they hated it? Well, how might I improve?

But silence? That’s the worst!

Was I just caught with my pants down?

Houston is gonna measure teachers by their test scores — and fire the ones that don’t add up.

Interesting stuff.

I guess we always knew it would come to this, didn’t we? Nobody is questioning the tests; everyone is questioning the teachers that don’t deliver the test scores.

The article is well worth a read. Seems as though they have a sophisticated prognostication thing-ey which can generate a “value-added test score”.

As the article says…

The value-added score, based on a complex statistical formula, is a measure of how much a teacher’s students exceeded expectations on standardized tests (mostly the TAKS: Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills). The formula projects how well students should score based on their own past performance.

If the formula is so good at projecting how well the students should score, then how come the formula can’t discern that there is no formula for knowing where actual live human beings will be 3-4 years down the line?

Can you guess what will happen 3 years from now? Sure you can. Let’s just go back to 2007 and look at some of the most widely held best “guesses” for 2010 from way back then.

The best minds on Wall Street. They took a shot in 2007 on a thing called derivatives. And they have Harvard MBA’s.

Oops. Not so good.

Okay, that’s not fair. I mean who could have predicted credit swap defaults and the recession? Let’s guess about something else. We’ll make it easy. A virtual lock in 2007 to do all sorts of unprecedented, amazing things in 2010. A man who was gonna approach if not break all kinds of records by one Golden Bear.

And the winner is… Tiger Woods.

Whoops! Wrong again.

Sure, we should fire teachers based on not measuring up to their “value-added” scores. Cause three years from now is so easy to predict — especially when it comes to student success — that there is simply no sense even doubting the veracity of this approach to professional evaluation.

Uhm, Houston, we have a problem…

Here’s the problem: our scores speak for our school before people know who we are or what we do.

The book is being judged by the cover. But does the cover have anything to do with gaining insight to or prognosticating about the content? For sure.

However, does it tell the whole story?
Probably not.

Does it tell an accurate story?
I am not so sure.

Does it tell a fair story?
Nope, I don’t think so.

Test scores are the first — and sadly, in far too many cases — the last things that politicians, bureaucrats and parents are seeing and using to make judgements as if one can know from afar what can only be viewed up close.

And far too many of their judgements are being based on these narrow windows.

I guess I wouldn’t have so much of a problem with this if I didn’t believe there was such a wide gap between test scores and what was actually going on in a teacher’s room. It’s just not, in my opinion, an accurate, insightful, full, rich, deep look in the profession of teaching.

And yet, it is being assumed to be so.

Look, my test scores are gonna rise next year. Why? Because that is my (forced) goal.

But does it mean I am a better teacher?
Does it mean my students learned more?

I’d say it definitely will mean my students will have become better test takers. But at what cost?

We are so fiercely driving all our nation’s teachers to up their bubble test scores that we are losing sight of the fact that, in the 21rst century, almost no one uses bubbles to measure the ability to perform at any level once you leave the world of academics.

Performance is measured in how one performs… by actually doing something.

But we are not asking our kids to DO enough.

And they want to DO more.

And they take greater benefit from school when they DO more.

And in life, they are gonna have to DO.

I mean come on, the reason we love the magnet schools and high-functioning charters is because we get to see kids in their science classes looking under microscopes while kids in computer classes program code and kids in theater art class stage full ballet productions.

We don’t ask to see the bubble test scores of the kid we see building solar heating panels. Why? Because we know they are learning.

How? In non-quantifiable ways.

Will we ever again trust in the idea of non-quantifiable learning?

How about a bubble test for politicians? I mean since they are so accurate and insightful — and can be used to determine so much authentic insight into actual professionalism — why not make the people who are making our students student up to the scntron have to step up to the scantron sheet themself?

I’ll go easy on the — it’ll be a simple T or F bubble test.

Choose A for True and B for False.

Number 2 pencils only please.

1. Did you fulfill all of your campaign promises in a timely, thorough manner?
T or F?

2. Did you balance the budget?
T or F?

3. Did you have sex with a goat in the bathroom of a travel stop along the highway at 2:00 a.m.?
T or F?

Please add questions to the list as you see fit. I figure a 100 question bubble test should give us just the data we need to determine the effectiveness of our elected leaders.

And we could also devise them for school superintendents, principals, and parents, too. Think of the accountability!!

ETS, watch out… I am gonna take down your empire!!!

During a class discussion the other day the subject of alcoholism came up. I asked my 2nd period class, “How many people have, in their opinion, an alcoholic relative in their family?”

75% of the kids raised their hands.

“How many people in this room have seen a beer commercial?” (They are 9th graders, kids that are 14 for the most part.)

All hands went up.

“How many people in this room have seen over 10 beer commercials?”

75% of the hands went up.

“How many people in this room have seen over 50 beer commercials?”

A heck of a lot of hands went up. More boys at this juncture. (Watching sports on TV I am presume.) Remember, these are 14 year olds.

So we outlaw tobacco ads on tv and make the tobacco companies pay for their own “Don’t smoke” campaigns yet booze gets a complete and total pass when it comes to direct marketing to our kids? A marketing they do, mind you, with the highest hopes of turning our young people into future, lifelong customers.

Otherwise known as addicts. I mean, alcoholics. I mean, er, responsible drinkers.

Look, I find beer commercials funny and entertaining and even kinda innovative. But the damage that alcoholics do to themselves, their family and society? Not quite so Ha-Ha.

And why do I have a feeling that my kids could name more brands of beer than they could members of the Supreme Court, Congress and so on? Matter of fact, I bet Joe Biden would get pummeled by the suave Dos Equis guy in a face recognition contest.

Bottoms up.

I once coached the high school baseball team. (Some of the hardest work ever done. Teachers that coach work some of the craziest hours on the planet.)

But the thing I soon learned was that the team that does well is the team that executes the very simple elements of the game.

Field ground balls.
Throw with basic accuracy to your teammates.
Catch the pop flies that are easily catchable.
Have your pitchers throw strikes.
Teach your hitters how to make contact and put the ball in play.

In high school baseball, little league as well, a team that can do this will prove to be a very solid team. And if you know anything about high school baseball, teams like this are much more rare than one would think.

They have kids that swing for the fences, try to turn crazy double plays, see ground ball after ground ball go through their infielder’s legs or then, when they do field ground balls, watch throw the ball into the opposing team’s dugout instead of to their own first baseman.

It’s all about fundamentals.

Fundamentals are not sexy.
Fundamentals are not thrilling.
Fundamentals are not razzle dazzle.

Fundamentals are vanilla.
Fundamentals can be boring to watch, learn and practice.

But fundamentals produce results.

And a team that doesn’t know how to execute the basic fundamentals is cooked.

In basketball, the team that is comprised of showboats that can slam dunk will not measure up to a team that can play fundamentally sound defense and offense.

In baseball, well you just heard.

For these tests, to improve our scores, we need to simply be able to execute fundamentally sound test-taking.

Test taking at the level where we currently are is a sport.

I had a former student — now a senior in college who can’t graduate because the last engineering class he needs is not being offered til next semester due to furloughs and budget cuts… another blog post entirely — come to visit me this week. We chatted during lunch.

I asked him how he liked his professors. He said, some were good, some were bad. Then he added, “But the bad ones are good for me because they force me to learn the material on my own. I mean I gotta know this stuff, right?”

And isn’t that the difference between kids that achieve and kids that don’t? Really, don’t ya love that ownership?

Public education in America would be absolutely revolutionized if our students — and the parents — simply had an attitude adjustment. Instead of viewing teachers as the ones responsible for making kids learn we need to flip the script so that the students feel responsible for becoming well educated… and instead, view teachers as people who are facilitators of that aim.

Not the doers of all the work for them.

Your math teacher stinks? In today’s world, that’s seems to be a perfectly justifiable reason for kids (and parents, and politicians) to blame the school for these kids not knowing their multiplication tables.

Not in my house. My kids are gonna know their multiplication tables even if they are taught by New York City’s Rubber Room All Stars!

Your English teach is lame? Well, then by all means you should not know how to compose a simple sentence.

How about a little ownership over your own education, huh? Instead of viewing school like a 5 star hotel where everyone who works their ought to be at your beck and call with white glove service, why not view school more like CostCo or Home Depot where the goods are on the shelf, but dude or dudette, you better go figure out a way to get what you need by yourself!!

And if you do find an employee that can help you, be grateful for their assistance instead of demonstrating an attitude of entitlement.

Do teachers need to do better in this country? For sure!

But if they don’t is that really a legitimate excuse for our students not to become well-educated?

All the tools are there. The internet. The public library. Teachers who care. Outreach programs. On and on and on. For the kid who is ready to apply some good ol’ fashioned elbow grease, they sky is the limit.

And for the kid who thinks it is the job of other people to “make them smart”… may the Lord watch over them.

To many students, the holiday break of 2009 is long gone. But I have a student who will never forget it. That’s because his uncle strangled his aunt to death — and then shot himself in the head in a murder suicide — with his nephew, my ninth grader, in the next room.

And yes, my student heard the whole thing.

Of course I am setting my goal to do all the humanistic work I can to make sure this kid, well… doesn’t go off the deep end. But how his story will play out is a great unknown right now.

And yet, how will my work with him be measured this year? By the standardized test scores he delivers on the bubble tests we administer to probe his aptitudes and capacities.

Really, that’s it. What are his test scores?

Fair to him? Naw.
Fair to judge me as a teacher by his scores? Naw. And yet, that’s how the district, the county and the state are going to measure my professionalism this year.

Next time you see low test scores and think stinky teachers are to blame for low performance, well… perhaps there’s a human being behind each of those data-driven numbers we offer to the bean counters.

Jobs are gonna be slashed next year as a result of our NCLB probation status. But are the measurements really apples to apples?

A student witness to murder-suicide in the age of NCLB… no excuses, just results.

I love sports. Always have, always will.

And if you love sports the way I do you really get into all aspects of the game. This even extends to coaches and how they speak with the media.

I have a feeling I should start to take a hint. (More on that in a sec.)

In today’s world, it’s a simple truism of life. If you can’t “manage” the media (no one really “controls” it, but most coaches and players — the more high profile, the more important this is — do work hard to “manage” the media) you are cooked.

I guess this is why coaches so often devolve into politically correct blandness. When hit with adversity like a bad call by the officials, you know they swear like sailors behind the scenes but in front of the cameras, they all know that you will not last long if you don’t work to say the right things about the refs, your opposition, the higher-ups that own the teams, run the athletic departments at the universities and so on.

It’s like that scene from the movie Bull Durham where Kevin Costner teaches Tim Robbins how to speak in cliches. Funny, but true.

As a blogger, I seek the opposite. I am trying to be honest, unvarnished and forthright. But now that the stakes are so clearly set for me and my school about “raise your test scores or suffer the consequences” I feel as if I am at risk of being too blunt.

I want to provide a window. A look in. A means for folks to see what it’s like from a real classroom perspective in a manner that actually has some flavor, some spice, some opinion and works not to pull punches so that the reality of these circumstances can be exposed — and maybe we can all learn how to be better at what we do as a result. (I really view myself as a learner, first and foremost, and writing empowers me to be incredibly reflective about my profession.)

Yet, there’s a part of me that fears the approach I take to blogging could cause me trouble. For example, if I say that teaching undocumented kids in a Title 1 school who have parents that don’t speak English sets our teachers up to have lower test scores than people who teach in schools where the predominance of kids have college-educated parents who don’t live a community plagued by things like violence, transience, little formal education, and so on, I open myself up to criticism of…

– being racist
– having low expectations for my kids
– not believing in the power of young people
– being classist
– doubting the ability to turnaround our district
and on and on and on.

Never mind that I have taught at Lynwood High and worked with such kids for years and years and loved the job, the parents I’ve met, and the work immensely. But now that the NCLB screws are turning on our staff and all our jobs are apparently at risk — while teachers who work in schools with virtually no issues of like ilk to ours are not having their jobs held over their head if they don’t immediately raise their bubble test scores — am I being too blunt?

The playing field has not been equal for kids who live in America’s lower socio-economic communities since public education began.

And now a part of me feels as if the teachers of those kids are being demonized for it. Is the playing field of teacher accountability truly equal?